Style (Scottish Highers English): Revision Notes
Style
Understanding the play as performance
Men Should Weep was written to be performed on stage, not read as a text. This means Stewart shapes the audience experience through theatrical techniques, not just through words on a page. When studying the play, consider how the audience would respond to what they see and hear. Stewart uses dialogue, stage directions, structure, and other dramatic methods to reveal character and develop themes.
Theatrical Context
Understanding this play requires thinking like an audience member in a theatre. Every element - from spoken words to visual details - is designed to create an experience for viewers. Stewart's theatrical choices shape how the audience interprets characters and themes.
Dialogue
How characters reveal themselves through speech
Dialogue is Stewart's primary tool for characterisation. What characters say, and how they say it, tells the audience who they are and what motivates them.
Worked Example: Analysing Dialogue in Act II, Scene 2
In Act II, Scene 2, Alec and Isa have their first argument. Isa attacks her husband directly:
Isa: "Fancy me mairryin a rat like you. The joke wis on me a right."
Alec: "Isa, I'll hae plenty again, you'll see…I've a coupla pals that's got ideas…wait on, Isa! I'll get ye onythin ye want…a fur coat an crockydile shoes – ye said ye wanted crockydile shoes – I proamise, Isa! I proamise!..."
Analysis:
- Isa's comparison of Alec to a rat immediately establishes her contempt
- The audience hears her bitterness and regret in this harsh language
- Alec's response, broken by ellipsis, suggests his thoughts are fragmented and desperate
- He may be following her around the room as he speaks, physically chasing her approval
- This reveals his obsession with Isa and his complete dependence on her
When Alec lists material gifts - fur coats and crocodile shoes - he shows his deferential nature. He believes he can win her back through possessions. This also tells the audience about Isa. Did she marry Alec for what he could provide rather than for love? Her later actions in the play confirm these suspicions. The dialogue works on multiple levels, revealing both characters simultaneously.
Dialect and Scots
Creating authenticity through language
Stewart writes in Scots dialect, which gives the characters' voices authenticity. This linguistic choice creates a social document of 1930s East End tenement life. The audience experiences the world of the Morrisons more immediately because they hear the actual language of that community.
Specific Scots vocabulary:
- Midden: rubbish dump (the household is often called this)
- Reddin up: tidying up (Maggie talks about redding up the place)
These words are not just colourful choices. They anchor the play in a specific time, place, and social class.
The Power of Authentic Language
When John gives Maggie the red hat, he uses a children's rhyme: "nievy-nievy-nick-knack, which haun will ye tak?" This Scots phrase evokes childlike enthusiasm and delight. The audience sees John's genuine pleasure in giving his wife this gift. The language makes his emotion tangible.
Later, when John accidentally tears the ticket off the hat, Maggie calls him "a great muckle ham-fist". This insult sounds harsh but actually displays warmth and humour between them. The dialect makes their relationship feel real and lived-in. The language throughout is animated and lively, reflecting the spirit of the characters who endure such difficult circumstances.
Humour
Providing relief and showing resilience
Stewart uses humour frequently to offer the audience relief from the play's harsh realities. Humour also demonstrates the resilience of characters living in poverty.
Granny often provides comic moments. The audience sees her sucking sweets and singing, which borders on caricature. This makes her treatment later in the play more affecting. When she is passed between Maggie and Lizzie with her bed, the audience feels sympathy. Lizzie's concern only for the pension book, rather than Granny herself, sharpens this emotional response. The earlier humour makes the cruelty more visible.
Worked Example: Humour in Act III
In Act III, after John finds work, the atmosphere is more upbeat. Ernest listens to jazz music, which annoys Maggie. She complains the musician "has clean lost control". Ernest explains improvisation as "Louis Armstrong daein a sort o turn". Maggie replies: "Well, you dae a turn for me, son – wi yon knob."
Effect: Her amusing way of asking him to turn off the radio makes this a light-hearted scene. This contrasts deliberately with the intense breakdown scene that came before it, allowing the audience to breathe before the next emotional challenge.
Structure
How the sequence of events shapes meaning
The ordering of scenes and the placement of climaxes shape how the audience understands the play.
Climaxes at the end of each act:
- Act I: John hits Jenny
- Act II: Maggie breaks down
- Act III: Maggie asserts herself as head of the household
These climaxes create dramatic peaks that propel the narrative forward and leave the audience in suspense. Each ending forces the audience to wait, building tension and investment in the Morrison family's fate.
Juxtaposition of scenes
Stewart deliberately places contrasting scenes next to each other to create meaning.
In Act I, Scene 2, the audience sees Alec and Isa's dysfunctional relationship and Alec's drunkenness. This is immediately followed by the positive interaction between John and Maggie. The contrast highlights the strong bond between the parents. It also shows the audience what could have happened to the Morrison marriage had John continued drinking. The juxtaposition makes the audience appreciate John and Maggie's relationship more deeply.
In Act II, Scene 1, events build towards Maggie's collapse in the next scene. Maggie returns from hospital without Bertie, who has tuberculosis. Then Jenny leaves and John despairs. Each incident adds weight until Maggie finally breaks under the accumulated pressure. The structure creates an inevitable sense of tragedy.
Stage set and stage directions
Visual details that develop character and meaning
Stewart provides detailed stage directions that contribute to characterisation and atmosphere. These directions are not decorative - they carry meaning.
Setting and social conditions: The stage directions establish the poverty of the tenement. In Act III, when the Morrisons gain more money, the set changes visibly. The audience sees physical evidence of their improved circumstances.
Character actions reveal inner states:
- Maggie: when anxious, she runs her fingers through her hair
- John: when reminded of unemployment, he drops and slumps in a chair, as if physically wounded. His masculinity is visibly damaged
- Alec: often panicking or being violent towards Isa
- Jenny: early in the play, she has "her nose in the air as she fights to be free"
These physical actions communicate emotion and psychology without words, making the characters' inner lives visible to the audience.
In Act III, irony is created through stage directions. A band outside plays "O Come All Ye Faithful" just as Isa enters to pack her case and leave Alec for another man. The hymn about faithfulness contrasts sharply with Isa's infidelity.
At the play's end, Maggie's final words about her future are spoken "very softly". This quietness implies that speaking too loudly might damage or prevent her dream from becoming real. She is tentative because hope has never been her reality - only "a whisper of something make-believe from long-ago". The stage direction enriches the audience's understanding of Maggie's emotional state. It shows her fragility and wonder at the possibility of change.
Symbolism
Objects and moments with deeper meanings
Certain moments and objects carry symbolic weight beyond their literal presence.
John smoking at the end of Act I
After arguing with Jenny, John stands looking out into the night, smoking a fag-end. This moment can be read symbolically. He stares into darkness, which represents his confusion about his daughter. He cannot understand her anymore. The darkness is metaphorical as well as literal.
Smoking the fag-end (a cigarette butt, already used) could symbolise his attempt to revive a connection with Jenny that no longer exists. He is trying to get something from nothing. It could also represent his fading motivation after long unemployment. The symbol works on multiple levels.
Christmas setting
Jenny arrives at the end of the play "like the fairy wi a magic wand from the top of the Christmas tree that they have all been praying for". Christmas is traditionally a time of hope and redemption. Stewart uses this setting to suggest the possibility of renewal for the Morrison family.
The red hat
In Act III, John buys Maggie a red hat for Christmas. She is thrilled because it reminds her of her courting days - she wore a red hat when she went out with John. The hat represents her youth and the best days before marriage and motherhood consumed her identity.
Significantly, Granny, Lily, and the neighbours disapprove. Granny says "its nae a colour for an aul wife". Lily offers faint praise: "Oh. Quite nice." Maggie, however, likes it and wears it to go out with Lily.
The Red Hat's Symbolic Significance
The hat's unconventionality is its significance. It connects to Maggie's growing strength and spirit. It also links to Jenny's earlier promiscuous behaviour. Maggie wears it regardless of etiquette and tradition, just as she defies convention at the play's end. The red hat symbolises her emerging independence and her refusal to be constrained by others' expectations.
Imagery
Rare but powerful metaphorical language
Stewart rarely uses imagery, prioritising authentic voices over poetic language. However, when she does use metaphor, it carries considerable weight.
Worked Example: Jenny's River Imagery in Act III
Jenny describes what she experienced and why she came home. She creates an image of a river:
"(more to herself than the others) there wis lights shimmerin on the blackness…it kind o slinks alang slow, a river, in the night. I was meanin tae let it tak me alang wi it."
Analysis:
- The physical sense of Jenny standing by a river, contemplating suicide, is clear
- The river also works metaphorically, representing depression and despair - a dark force always present, waiting in the shadows
- The word "slinks" gives the river an ominous quality, as if it is sly and cunning, trying to lure her in
- The parenthetical phrase "a river" emphasises Jenny's isolation - she is alone with this darkness
Jenny says that within the blackness, she sees her daddy's face. This vision gives her comfort and courage to keep going and to return home. John is the hope that pulls her out of the abyss. The imagery conveys both Jenny's desperation and the redemptive power of her father's love. The metaphor works emotionally on the audience, making Jenny's suffering vivid and real.
Key Points to Remember:
- Stewart uses dialogue to reveal character directly through what people say and how they speak
- Scots dialect creates authenticity and roots the play in its specific social context
- Humour provides relief but also shows the characters' resilience in hardship
- Structure matters: climaxes end each act, and scenes are juxtaposed for deliberate contrast
- Stage directions carry meaning and develop characterisation beyond the spoken words
- Symbolism operates through objects like the red hat and moments like John smoking at the window
- Imagery is rare but powerful, especially in Jenny's river speech about contemplating suicide